Prelude Dark Pain (PC) Preview

Last week was Steam Next Fest, and with it came a host of new demos to try out. I thought I would start off with a title that instantly captured my interest through its comic book art style: Prelude Dark Pain. Set in a dark fantasy world and developed by Quickfire Games, Prelude Dark Pain is a story-focused tactical RPG which is right up my alley. The story takes place in the world of Statera and follows blacksmith Soren as he flees from the Order of the Ashen Crusade, who wish to punish him for crimes he didn’t commit.

As far as the demo goes, there isn’t a ton of content beyond the tutorial and a few battles, but I did enjoy what I played. As mentioned earlier, the game looks wonderful with cool-looking characters galore and some great animation work. Of course the comparison to Darkest Dungeon and Curse of the Dead Gods is no doubt strong, but the style just works perfectly with this tone so I don’t mind the lack of originality. I also love how cutscenes are animated just like you are reading a comic book with panels flashing through each scene.

In terms of gameplay, there’s a lot of potential here as well. Battles are set up using your standard grid-based maps with you taking command of a team of heroes, but each character is given a plethora of options available on a given turn to spice things up. Each hero will have a specific class which will tailor their unique playstyle. This demo offers four characters that are evenly split between melee and ranged. Every turn, characters will get two battle points, and these can be spent to utilize skills which each have an associated cost and varying effects. These skills can of course be mixed and matched according to your needs as characters level up.

Additionally, you can use battle points to take the defend action, which not only will reduce incoming damage but also protect you, especially from flank attacks or attacks from behind. Lastly, every character can also, of course, move and utilize a basic attack on a turn. I like how (unlike most games in the genre) you can use skills and still attack; not only can you push more damage, which ensures fights move along, but it allows you to create some cool combos between team members and terrain. Of course, enemies can also employ these same strategies against your team, making for a good level of challenge, particularly in boss encounters, as each boss also gets a free action during each round of initiative to pummel your team with special skills. Utilizing positioning is a key aspect of this title, as you can also take advantage of terrain on most battlefields to overcome bad odds. For example, this demo features one fight which takes place on moving vehicles. By utilizing my skills that pushed foes in combination with smart movement, I was able to one-shot foes and clear out large swaths of enemies quickly.

My biggest issue with Prelude: Dark Pain thus far is that the menus can be a little bit unintuitive. I had an easy time finding enemy stats but wasn’t able to get status conditions to display in a way where I could properly read what they did unless my own team was afflicted with them. There were also a fair bit of dialogue typos as well as awkward grammar, which I hope will be corrected to improve the writing quality overall for the full release. It also would be nice if there was a little voice acting added to the cutscenes to help breathe a little more life into the stunning artwork.

Prelude Dark Pain is set to release later this year on all platforms. The game will feature about 20 playable heroes, eight class types, as well as a multitude of side quests and some base building elements. This will allow you to craft special gear and have your extra party members undertake raids to gather resources or level up skills.